Study On Inter - Provincial Water Efficiency Efficiency, Convergence Mechanism And Spatial Spillover Effect In China

The shortage of water resources and water ecological deterioration will increasinglyrestrict China’s sustainable economic and social development. To improve the efficiency ofwater utilization becomes the key problem realizes the sustainable utilization of waterresources of China. Index system evaluation method, stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) anddata envelopment analysis (DEA) is the three main evaluation methods of water utilizationefficiency. DEA model as a measure of relative efficiency with the same type of input andoutput of several departments is the effective methods and the most commonly usedevaluation method of the water use efficiency. But now water resources use efficiency DEAmodel for the measure of China water resources use efficiency and the research influencingfactors of China water resources use efficiency mainly exist below shortage. In the investment,it is simple to take the water for life and production indicators together with other indicatorsas inputs. These inputs did not reflect water resources consumption of the real socialeconomic system. In the undesirable output, it is pure to consider the water pollutant of CODand nitrogen ammonia emissions as the expected output, but not considering the real losscaused by the water pollution to water environment. This neglect must have an affect on theevaluation results impact of the water resources use efficiency. There is no space effecthypothesis on the research of the influence factors about China’s water resources useefficiency. And implying ordinary least squares (OLS) of ignoring space effect makes themodel to estimate. In practical application there often exists deviation problem in the modelset, which leads to the problems that not complete and science, the lack of due explanatorypower on the influencing factor analyses results and inference of China water resources useefficiency.In this paper, firstly, lots of literatures on the measure of water resources utilizationefficiency are compiled. Some reviews are given separately on concepts and contents of waterprintfoot, the water resources utilization efficiency measurement methods, spatial econometricmodel and test, convergence mechanism and spillover effect model.Secondly, based on provincial panel data of water footprint and gray water footprint, andwith the help of data envelopment analysis model considering and without considering theundesirable output, this paper estimates the water resources utilization efficiency in Chinafrom1997to2011. The spatial weighting matrix based on economy-spatial distance functionis established to discuss spatial autocorrelation of water resources utilization efficiency. Withthe help of absolute β convergence model, this paper concludes that there exists βconvergence in the water resources utilization efficiency. By mean of the spatial Durbin econometric model, this paper studies spatial spillover effects of the provincial waterresources utilization efficiency in China.Finally, the results show that,1) With considering and without considering theundesirable output, there is significant spatial correlation in provincial water resourceefficiency in China. The regions with HH(high-high) correlation pattern are mainly located inthe east coastal regions in China and the regions with LL(low-low) correlation pattern aremainly located in the midwest regions in China. And most of these regions have a high levelof significance, such as Xinjiang, Xizang, Qinghai.2) Under the two cases, the convergence speed is0.1404and0.1491, respectively. Thissuggests that it is faster than the case considering spatial lag effects and spatial error effects.The factors investment in science technology, education investment and GDP per capita havepositive influence on the convergence speed of the water resources utilization efficiency inChina, and the negative effects relative to the per capita water footprint.3) Under the two cases, the spatial autoregressive coefficients (ρ) are0.278and0.507respectively, at1%significance level. There exist the spatial spillover effects of provincialwater resources utilization efficiency.4) With considering the undesirable output, these factors of the education funds, thetransportation infrastructure, and the industrial and agricultural water consumption proportionhave positive impacts. These factors of foreign direct investment, the industrial added valuewater consumption per ten thousand yuan, per capita water consumption, and the totalprecipitation have negative impacts.5) Without considering the undesirable output, the factor of GDP per laborer has agreater positive significant influence on the water resources utilization efficiency. Howeverthe facts of industrial added value water consumption in ten thousand yuan and thetransportation infrastructure have no significant influence.6) Regardless of undesirable output of water resources utilization efficiency, theassessment of the present real water resources utilization in China will be distorted andpolicy-making will be misled. The water efficiency measure considering environmentalfactors (such as gray water footprint) is more reasonable.